You know you’ve done it—or you’ve at least thought about it. Maybe you thought you really needed it, maybe it was just an excuse to dress differently, but every CEO, at one time or another, has been tempted by the offsite corporate retreat.
Actually, I’ll amend that just a tad. I once worked for a CEO who had to be dragged in, kicking and screaming. That was a unique case. He didn’t want to hear anyone else’s ideas, because he knew they’d be so clearly and vastly superior to his own. But he was special. I’m sure that, to this day, he stares at the photo of his Porsche on his desk and laments letting himself get talked into it.
Now, as for the rest of you…
Unless the company is crashing and burning, and the employees are desperate to effect a change in direction, the offsite is almost never a bottom-up idea. What sane employee would crave a day sitting around a cabin, resort, farm, field or hotel conference room hanging with the bosses?
If you want a day out of the office, that’s called a vacation day. Or a personal day. Or a fake-sick day (wherein you pretend to have a stuffy nose and then go to the beach). Sitting around with flip charts and a “facilitator” isn’t my idea of a break from the grind. It’s not your employees’ idea of one, either. No, the offsite happens because you want it. CEOs get inspired to plan an offsite for several reasons, including:
Midlife crisis. You’re in your early 40s. You wear suits and sit in a big leather chair every day. Someone else controls your schedule and answers your phone calls. Don’t you just want to go wild? Don’t you just want to rebel against “The Man”? (Wait. You are “The Man.”) Don’t you just want to thumb your nose at propriety, at all that is good and decent, and wear a golf shirt to work? With the top button open? No, make that the top two buttons!
You’re a dangerous guy, and if you’re going to do this, you have to make sure all your employees see it. You can handle non-big-leather-chair seating. You just might plop yourself down in a beanbag chair. You just might wear casual shoes! OK, Hush Puppies. Let’s not get carried away.
Mr. CEO-in-midlife-crisis needs something to break the monotony. And if his employees have to be dragged along for the experience, well, it’ll do ’em good.
You need to “listen.” Yes, the quote marks are intentional. People are complaining that you don’t listen to their ideas. You can’t have that (the complaining, I mean, not the non-listening). Granted, you could not listen to the complaints, since you don’t listen to anything else—but they still make noise, and that’s annoying.
When you sense the natives are getting restless because you’re not listening to their complaints, er, ideas, plan an offsite! Granted, this isn’t what the complaining employees had in mind at all. They don’t want to go to an offsite—nor are they all that sure they really want you to listen.
It’s always easier to complain and proscribe ideas when there’s no chance of your ideas actually being implemented. Take Bob. Bob has been saying for as long as anyone can remember that the company should get rid of the Connecticut account, because it’s too time-consuming and wastes too much time and too many resources.
No one listens to Bob. But now there’s an offsite coming up. Does Bob dare suggest at the offsite that the Connecticut account be jettisoned? Because the boss just might do it. What if the result is disastrous? This has been Bob’s crusade for the past several years. It’s like The Clash says: “You have the right to free speech/Unless of course you actually try it!”
Under normal circumstances, employee suggestions are dead on arrival. That’s for the employees’ own safety. The offsite puts that in jeopardy. Next time, you’ll think before complaining the boss isn’t listening. The offsite is the biggest bluff-call in the corporate world.
You really have run out of ideas. OK. This happens to the best of us. Sales aren’t growing. You’re not meeting goals. Or you’re not sure what the next group of goals should be. So you really need a brainstorm, and you know your team won’t be able to think clearly when their phones are ringing and their email alerts keep going off.
OK. Fair enough. Of course, getting them away from their phones and their computers isn’t so easy these days, since most people can take both devices with them everywhere they go. To make this work, you need to set up metal detectors at the offsite venue and confiscate cell phones and laptops. Otherwise, your employees are going to be getting up and walking outside every five minutes.
Also, before you have an offsite for this particular reason, you have to figure out how to explain it to your employees without actually admitting you’ve run out of ideas. If you tell them you’re having a midlife crisis or that you’ve decided to pretend to listen to them, they’ll probably believe you.
There are reasons the offsite only happens so often. One is the assault on your sensory perceptions once you get there. I’m talking specifically about what people wear. No one can quite figure out what to wear to an offsite.
The office is easy. Suits, or at least shirts and ties. Home is easy. Jeans and t-shirts. But the offsite? You’ve been told to dress casually, but you’re going to be with the boss. Do you really want to wear a t-shirt from your goth phase? You end up with some sort of Dockers/Izod hybrid that makes you look like you’re on your way to a cotillion. But executive management is even worse. They haven’t dressed casually since the Neil Diamond concert in 1972. They actually shopped for this. (But of course, they forgot to get socks, so they’re wearing tan khakis and Top-Siders with black socks—all of which are only too visible as they’re trying to “relax,” because that’s what the facilitator told them to do.)
Ah yes. The facilitator. The Oprah of the offsite. There are actually people who’ll train you to be a facilitator. You learn about keeping groups focused on their tasks, gently steering away from confrontations, choosing good color combinations for flip charts…hey, it’s not easy. If it was, anyone could do it.
After all this, you’ll be relieved to get back to the office, hide in your cubicle and have the boss resume not listening to you. Thank God nothing said that day is likely to be implemented. Just going through the motions is traumatic enough.
